UPDATE - South Korea To Put New Homegrown SLBM Into Service In 2nd Half Of 2022 - Reports

South Korea intends to commission its recently unveiled homegrown submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) around the second half of the next year, the Yonhap news agency reported on Monday, citing sources

SEOUL (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 20th September, 2021) South Korea intends to commission its recently unveiled homegrown submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) around the second half of the next year, the Yonhap news agency reported on Monday, citing sources.

Last week, the Asian country successfully tested its new SLBM at a testing ground of the South Korean national agency for defense research and development. President Moon Jae-in, who attended the event, said that the ballistic missile would serve as a deterrence against North Korean provocations. The weapon was presented as Pyongyang conducted tests of two cruise missiles fired towards the Sea of Japan.

"Several more rounds of tests will be conducted to ensure its reliability. After wrapping up development by early next year, we will begin mass production in the first half of 2022. The missiles will likely then be deployed for actual operations starting in the second half," a government source told the news agency.

Another source cited by the agency was quoted as saying that the military was working to gradually deploy a total of 78 missiles to nine mid-class submarines, including the Dosan Ahn Chang-ho, the country's first 3,000-ton-class submarine put in service last month.

The news agency added that the new SLBM would be equipped with conventional warheads, not nuclear ones, as South Korea is barred from having nuclear weapons.

Commenting on South Korea's new SLBM, the North's Jang Chang Ha, the president of the academy of National Defence, said the weapon could not "be the one which will be an effective military attack means in a war," as quoted by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

"South Korea's SLBM has not yet reached the stage of being regarded as a weapon of strategic and tactical significance which can be accepted as a threatening means," the expert said.

By presenting the new missile, Seoul must have sought to "relieve the increasing security uneasiness in the face of the continued news about missile development by the DPRK" and inform the international community that South Korea also "became a powerful advanced defence technology possessor," Jang added.

Basing on the pictures from the testing ground, the weapon "looked somewhat like a poor weapon without all its shape and far from an underwater weapon" and had a structure of a typical ground-to-ground tactical ballistic missile, he said.